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Right reaction? Cold spell forces Germany to switch back to nuclear reactors
Published: 09 February, 2012, 21:05
Edited: 10 February, 2012, 09:22
A man works at the reactor core of a former nuclear power station in Kalkar (Reuters / Ina Fassbender)
TAGS: Nuclear, Crisis, Europe, Weather
When a country declares its abandoning nuclear power, you don’t expect it to backtrack just one year later. But that is exactly what Germany is doing – because it’s gotten too cold for principles.
The cold-related surge in electricity demand has prompted Germany's network operators to call upon nuclear power plants left in reserve as a "preventative measure."
The move came after Europe was hit by an unusually cold weather front, with temperatures on the continent dropping to well below zero.
Originally, the decision to freeze out nuclear power came in March 2011, after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which led to nuclear waste leakage from the Fukushima plant. Eight of the country’s 17 reactors were switched off immediately, with the remaining ones scheduled to be taken offline by the year 2020.
Last year, Germany was forced to import electricity from neighboring Austria to help supply winter demand, but this year’s freak cold weather meant relying on your neighbors was no longer an option
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47 comments
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This is utter nonsense. As someone else pointed out already those power plants aren't NPPs and the reason reason why they are reactivated is because of the cold winter and the wide spread of electrical heaters in france which results in all time high demand, which the frensh NPPs can't keep up with. The german power plants are reactivated to stabilize the power grid that is destabalized by france, selling electricity to france is very profitable right now.
Germany could use LFTRs. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) have inherent safety, including:
- coolant remains liquid far above the reactor temperature (700-1000 degC vs 1400 degC); reactor operates at atmospheric pressure, no high pressure to explode, loss of coolant accidents are not possible. The coolant is chemically stable (unlike water or sodium cooled reactors), doesn't react with air or water.
- The coolant is strongly chemically bonded to the fuel. It cools to a glass-like solid, won't stay in the air, won't dissolve in water, won't travel far in water.
- Chance of radiation leakage in any accident is greatly reduced, compared to solid fueled reactors, since fuel is 1/250 of a solid fueled reactor. (A conventional reactor starts with 250,000 kg natural uranium per giga-watt-year, extracts a rare isotope, and only fissions about 1% of that before the fuel rod has to be replaced. Molten salt reactor would use 800 kg of fuel (any isotope of uranium or plutonium (from nuclear waste, weapons, or converting thorium to uranium in the reactor), circulates the molten fuel for 99%+ fissioning, and has very low waste: 83% of 800kg completely safe in 10 years; remaining 135 kg (300 lbs) completely safe in 350 years. Compare to PWR or LWR: 250,000kg for thousands to millions of years.
- Rate of fission slows as molten fuel expands from heat, increases as the molten fuel cools, very stable operation.
LFTRs also passive safety, including:
- Allow a frozen salt plug to melt, and fuel drains quickly to passive cooling tanks where nuclear reaction is impossible
- Fuel can be passively cooled with no water and no power, simple heat radiators, with radioactive materials completely contained.
My blog covers design, safety, nuclear waste, economics, development and testing to be done, proliferation, how LFTRs would fare in accidents or attacks, http://liquidfluoridethoriumreactor.glerner.com/
I was just going to suggest exactly what George said. Our governments pretend like electricity is some hot commodity, when in actuality the availability of global abundance of electricity is already there and being implemented in countries like China. We could in effect fuel the entire world, everything that uses electricty or energy, off a Thorium reactor. Cadillac introduced the "WTF" a year or 2 ago which was a car designed to run on thorium, however an engine is not ready to be mass produced for vehicles. (Research and development is underway)
Imagine a rock the size of a marble producing an energy equivalent of 7,500 gallons of gas.